Far too many people conflate the ability to create noise with having something to say. Noise is pure spectacle and easy to produce; the louder you are, the more attention you are likely to command—at first. That can be useful at spreading awareness, but ultimately, if what is being said is not substantive, volume can only carry the ideas (or lack thereof) so far.
Noise is airing videos of people touching each other’s genitalia and having the audacity to pretend it is anything other than asinine.
The videos in question are titled “Gay Men Touch Vagina For The First Time!,” “Lesbians Touch Penis For The First Time!,” and “Straight Men Touch Another Penis For The First Time!”
The people behind the videos are BriaAndChrissy, a lesbian singing and acting duo. Their videos are housed on YouTube, and MTV has subsequently given them a platform, with multiple posts and interviews from the duo.
On why they asked straight men to touch another man’s dick, Bria and Chrissy explain to MTV News via email: “Men are not allowed freedom and flexibility with their sexuality. They feel they must obey what societies [sic] standards of what ‘normal’ hetero behavior is.”
It’s a fair point, but how exactly does a man touching another man’s dick in a public video change anything? Why would a straight man want to touch another man’s dick anyway? He has his own dick to play with.
Joseph Lamour, of MTV, argues: “Society has drilled into our heads for so long that it’s not OK for a man to show feminine traits—and that very much includes doing or feeling anything vaguely romantic or sexual towards another man. That’s why the concept of a straight man touching another man anywhere brings forth weird, confusing feelings for a lot of people—but two hosts are trying to combat those feelings.”
First off, being attracted to another man does not necessarily make one feminine. Homophobia may be rooted in misogyny, but to argue a straight dude touching another dude’s dick fights such stigma is operating on an almost child-like level of naïveté. Moreover, athletes pat each other on the asses all the time, but many still need convincing that being gay doesn’t mean wanting to slurp anyone of the same sex up in the shower and/or locker room.
Why are they reducing complex issues related to gender norms and relations, and human sexuality, to genitalia anyway?
The video of lesbians touching penises for the first time is equally useless. All these videos do is remind me of my days in day care when, during nap time, I sometimes curiously touched other kids’ private parts and vice versa. Feel free to call me a baby thot right now, so long as you understand that none of what happened then greatly informed my journey into being completely accepting of my sexual orientation, the limitations of masculinity (particularly as a black man) and how to fly above society’s standards like I’m Kandi Burruss. Ditto for the folks who played “Doctor” as children.
These videos are also grossly stereotypical, but especially the gay men touch a vagina for the first time clip. You’re trying to raise people’s consciousness while predictably terrified gay men squirm as they touch a vagina while making comments like, “Do you keep any snacks down here?” and claiming to be fearful of falling into or losing a finger. I’m surprised someone didn’t do “jazz hands” before touching the vagina.
For that segment, Bria Kam told MTV News in a phone interview, “People don’t have as much of a problem seeing male genitalia as they do female because society thinks that women should be ladies."
So the answer to that is to have a gay man touch a vagina? If you say so. Meanwhile, there are plenty of folks who would counter that claim by (correctly) noting that women are far more exposed in terms of nudity in TV and film than men are. We don’t see many dicks flying around on TV and the bias behind that imbalance is clear. Nevertheless, again, how does a gay man touching a vagina help advance the cause she claims to be fighting for?
Well intentioned or not, these clips are being sold as progressive, but they play into fears from straight men that gay men only see them as dicks; they perpetuate trite stereotypes about gay men and women; they tackle the human body and sexuality in the most fraught way imaginable by assuming bodies are gross and alien and we all need to be convinced otherwise. They benefit their creators, but I question what positive effects this has for the communities they purport to be championing.
Kudos to all for garnering the attention that was so clearly sought out, but I’d love for everyone to return to something genuinely meaningful and helpful now.
I wouldn’t be bothered by that given how guilty most media companies are of attaining clicks by any means necessary in 2016, but to sell this silliness as something of substance is too stupid an error to ignore.